by Alan Evans
Crozier called in his deep voice, “They were heading north when we left them. I thought we’d better see how you were, rather than harry them. But one of ‘em was listing and I reckon she’ll sink.”
Brent thought: So one possibly sinking, certainly two not fit to fight, holed when they collided. But had he gained the decisive victory he’d wanted, to leave him free to attempt the landing? He now had only two boats. As if in confirmation he felt the bridge lurch beneath his feet as this one settled lower in the water.
Chris Tallon spoke from the deck below where he was marshalling his men, “You’ve got them out of our way.” He was talking of the E-boats, so he had appreciated the threat they might be to a landing. Brent only nodded; not agreement but an acknowledgment.
Grundy had climbed down to the deck now and was checking off his own men, making sure not one was missing. He glanced up at Brent’s set face and muttered to himself, “Well, cheer up, sir, for Gawd’s sake. We gave them a belting and they had to run for it. What did you want, another bloody Trafalgar?”
They transhipped to the other two boats, Brent’s crew and Vance’s survivors, Suzanne, the commandos, the wounded — and the dead. At Brent’s order they unlashed the dinghy from aft in the sinking boat and manhandled it across to Crozier’s. Vance’s craft burned down to the waterline and sank under a cloud of smoke that drifted down on the wind and set them coughing.
David Brent stood on Crozier’s bridge and watched the sea now washing in over the stern of his own boat. He was conscious of the girl, standing at the back of this bridge as she had stood on his. He thought that he should have sent her away with Jimmy Nash when she had offered to go. She would have missed the dangers of the last two actions. But it was easy to be wise after the event and she was all right — so far. He shifted uneasily, then was still.
His orders were unchanged. He was to rescue the prisoner on the train. He had to put Tallon and his men ashore and without delay because time was also an enemy. This was what was known as a calculated risk, or bloody folly if it went wrong.
Tommy Vance came to stand beside him and murmured, “We only caught sight of those E-boats for a few seconds each time we met them. So I wouldn’t bet money on it, but I don’t think this last lot were the ones we met earlier, and they must still be out there, somewhere.”
The boat alongside, deck awash, now sagged and her port side went under, her bridge dipped into the sea. David Brent did not take his eyes from her but he told Vance, “Between you and me, that’s right.”
Vance glanced sidewise at him and asked tentatively, “Are you still going on with it, then?”
“Yes, Tommy.” Because he had to. And quickly, before this action brought down the other E-boats. And because time was running out.
The engines grumbled and the boats moved ahead. Brent gave a course to meet Jimmy Nash and the drifter off the inlet where they were to make a landing.
*
Rudi had waited with his boats five miles to seaward of the fishing fleet. When Bruno Jacobi saw the glow on the horizon he reported it to Rudi, then suggested, “One of the Tommi boats burning?”
Rudi stared at the red wash in the sky and answered, “Let it burn. They won’t be sitting around watching it. We’ll run due north till we’re abreast of it, then wait again.” They were cruising northward when they saw the firing in the distance, the looping tracer. Rudi swore and slammed his fist on the bridge coaming. “An action! I’ll bet you anything you like that’s Gunther, come down from his own patrol area to stick his nose in.”
The firing ceased and Rudi stopped his flotilla, listened for the engine-noise of other boats headed seawards, towards him, but heard nothing. They watched the glow of the fire slowly dying in the sky and Bruno said hopefully, “Maybe Gunther has cleaned them up.”
Rudi snapped bitterly, “And maybe he hasn’t.”
Then the wireless operator came up to the bridge and handed him a slip from a signal pad. “Just picked this up, Herr Kapitänleutnant.”
Rudi took the signal and read it: “From Gunther to his base. ‘In action. Three enemy boats heavily damaged. My boats forced reduce speed. One sinking. Enemy broke off action headed north-west.’”
Bruno nodded. “Going home.”
Rudi said again, “Maybe. What I’m sure of is that Gunther charged in, greedy for pickings, when he saw that Tommi boat on fire, and they were waiting for him.”
He led the way below and leaned over the chart, one finger on the pencilled cross marking his present position. He thought a moment, then: “If Gunther was right and they turned for home then we’re too late and we’ve missed them. But I think Gunther didn’t know which way he was headed, never mind the Tommis.”
Bruno asked, “Do you think they might be trying to be clever?”
Rudi scowled at the chart, “I don’t know. It might be that this Tommi is another Gunther and doesn’t know what he’s doing. But I doubt that. It seems he laid a cute little trap for Gunther and chewed him up. The Tommi should be running for home.” Taking back the agent he had come for. “But maybe he’s in trouble. So — we’ll continue north, keeping out to sea and stopping frequently to listen.” He was not going to be caught like Gunther. “If we haven’t sighted them by the time we’re due west of this point, we’ll run down to it and sweep south from there.” He jabbed a finger at the chart where the prominent cape stuck out from the coastline.
*
When Albert had reached the inlet he had waited in the trees near the path that wound along the cliff-top. The inlet lay just north of the cape. A stream ran down to the sea through a steep, narrow ravine and where it cut through the cliffs it was crossed by a wooden footbridge that carried the path. Albert watched the path as he had often watched it from this position, just north of the footbridge.
He had confirmed there was no guard on the coast to the north of him. If this other section running south past the cape was guarded there would be a sergeant and six men. They would take it in turns to patrol through the hours of darkness. While four men and the sergeant stayed in the guard-hut, a half-kilometre south of the bridge and on the other side of the cape, two would patrol, one south of the hut, one north. That last man had a beat that brought him as far as tile bridge, where he would turn and retrace his steps.
Albert knew the routine as well as did the soldiers.
He saw his first sentry after a wait of only a few minutes. The man came trudging along the path on the far side of the bridge at a policeman’s slow, measured pace, his boots nearly silent on the rain-softened earth. He carried his rifle slung over one shoulder, his face under the big helmet unseen in the darkness, but Albert noted that this was a middle-sized, narrow-shouldered man. His boots clumped as he crossed the bridge, pausing in the middle to peer down into the ravine where the stream was a streak of silver at the bottom of a black pit. Once across the bridge he paused again for a minute, staring out to sea. Albert stood still, breathing shallowly through his mouth; the sentry was only a few yards from the old man’s hiding place in the trees. Then the soldier hitched the rifle more comfortably on his shoulder, trudged back across the bridge and down the path on his way to the guard-hut. He would turn when he saw it, would only go to the hut when he was due to be relieved at the end of his two-hour stint.
Albert saw a red glow in the sky now, out over the sea and south of the cape. He watched it for some time, then came a far-off crackle of firing that went on for a few minutes, before dying away into silence. Albert knew what that meant and peered anxiously out to sea, but soon afterwards a sentry came again. He, too, was faceless in the gloom but a bigger man, heavier. So the sentries had changed. Albert nodded: Good.
He watched the sentry cross and re-cross the bridge, his face always turned towards the sea and that distant glow. Then he disappeared along the track towards the hut. Now Albert moved. He took his watch from his pocket and used the torch to look at its face held inside his coat, noted the time; he had twenty minutes before the sentr
y would return. That was more than enough. He picked up his bag of tools and spent only five of those minutes working on the bridge, wincing all the time at the renewed pain the work sent lancing up his wrist. Then he returned to stand at the edge of the trees, in their shadow but not hidden among them as before.
He worried over the firing, knowing that Suzanne could be out there, somewhere. Was she involved in the fighting? In danger? He lit a cigarette and smoked it nervously, quickly, as the glow on the horizon faded then was snuffed out. When the caporal burned down he lit another from its stub and flicked that away. The big sentry returned a minute later.
Albert saw him appear on the path and walk onto the bridge. The sentry saw Albert, or rather the red glow of the caporal in the darkness under the trees. He unslung his rifle as he started across the bridge and Albert sucked rapidly, puffing smoke, mesmerised. The big man watched that glow and not where he set his feet as he took two strides, then a third that brought him to the centre of the bridge. As his boot came down so it went through the cardboard Albert had thumb-tacked there in place of the planks he had removed. The sentry plunged forward between the supporting timbers of the bridge and down into the ravine.
Albert heard the shriek of his falling, the crunching thud of his landing, swallowed, shuddered, threw away the cigarette and walked to the bridge. Some weeks ago he had laboriously prised loose the cross-planks of the bridge at the centre for a length of nearly three metres and replaced them only lightly nailed for their quick and easy removal — when needed. He had been wary and nervous all the time he had worked that afternoon but he had seen no one. More importantly, no one had seen him. This night he had taken up the planks after the big man had gone back to the hut, then in their place he laid the cardboard, cut from old boxes and painted black. It had been hidden, ready, among the trees where the planks lay now.
He knelt on the bridge, ripped away what cardboard still hung from the supports and took it into the wood. He left it there, brought back the planks and nailed them in place on the bridge again. He wielded a hammer, careless of the noise because the men in the guard-hut would not hear him at this distance and with the wind blowing from them to him. But he grunted with pain as each blow jarred his wrist.
Finally he went to the guard-rail that he had previously loosened, prised out the single nail that held it secure at one end and pushed that end outwards. He was satisfied he had set the scene of the “accident”. When the sentry was found it would be clear he had leaned on the guard-rail and it had given way under his weight.
He picked up his bag and slung it onto his back. The cliff dropped sheer some thirty feet to the beach so he walked inland along the side of the ravine to a place where it had crumbled for several yards. There he was able to climb down in a shower of sliding shale. At the bottom he walked by the side of the stream until he stood beneath the bridge. He shivered as he looked down at the body. He did not touch it, did not need to. The sentry lay face down on the rocks of the stream-bed with the water washing around and over him. He would have drowned if the fall had not killed him.
Albert edged past the body and walked on by the stream that led like a black, silver-glinting pathway to the beach. He left it there and crossed the sand and shingle until he stood near the water’s edge. He still shivered so he took the bottle from his bag, drew the cork and gulped cognac, felt it burn down into his belly. That was better — a little.
He peered out to sea but saw nothing but the big rollers curling over to break on the shore and those that followed ranked back until lost in the night. He wondered if Suzanne was out there, if she would come. It was one thing to say she would get the British boat to bring her here, another to accomplish it.
She had to land within the next hour. At the end of that time the sentries would be changed and the absence of one of them investigated. But she would appreciate that and knew what he had to do, the time it would take. He did not like this business. It had been easy to promise in haste but he had not known how hard it would be to keep that promise. Contriving the “accident” to the sentry had torn at Albert’s nerves and now he was alone and afraid.
He took another swallow of courage from the bottle then stowed it away in his pocket and took out the torch. He pointed it out to sea and worked the button in the signal: short — long. He almost dropped the torch as its narrow beam stretched out over the waves, catching the broken white water on their tops and turning it into silver lace. To Albert’s frightened, squinted eyes the beam seemed to extend for miles until he released the button and darkness swept in again.
He was certain anyone on the coast would have seen that ray of light. He was sweating now, head turning but blindly, his night vision destroyed by the beam of the torch. He waited, shoulders hunched, for a dragging minute but no rifle cracked nor harsh voice challenged. He remembered that the sentry to the south could not see him because of the cape lifting between them, and there were no patrols to the north; he had made sure of that before taking on his own sentry. He wiped his slippery hand on the front of his coat, took a fresh grip on the torch and flashed the signal again.
*
David Brent saw the first signal but did not answer. He watched the line of phosphorescence where the surf washed the shore a quarter-mile away, and waited. Suzanne stood at his shoulder on the bridge of Crozier’s boat and he heard her sigh, then say flatly, “He should send the signal twice, then wait for two minutes before sending it again, but reversed: long — short. That was the arrangement we agreed on” — agreed when she and Albert had planned possible landings and the trap for the sentry.
David thought: So that might not be our man. Have the S.S. got him down there, forcing him to use that torch? Brent knew if that was the case then he and Tallon had lost their last slim chance of carrying out their orders; the casualties and the lost boats would have been for nothing.
The two M.T.B.s flanked the drifter, lying close alongside with their bows pointed out to sea. They had only been on station five minutes, after meeting Jimmy Nash in the drifter then creeping in on the muttering auxiliary engines along the side of the cape, its mass looming to starboard. They had stopped a scant quarter-mile from the shore. The darkness and the silence were their only protection.
The commandos stood on the decks of the M.T.B.s and the drifter, their webbing ammunition pouches strapped over their khaki battledress, woollen cap-comforters snugged close on their heads. They cradled Thompson submachine-guns in their arms. Seven of them had big rucksacks standing beside them: the demolition team.
David could see the compact figure of Chris Tallon standing on the deck below. Both had discarded their oilskins but while Tallon was armed and dressed like his men, Brent wore a navy sweater and trousers with a pair of plimsolls borrowed from Crozier. Private “Johnson”, a Sudetan German, now interpreter and commando, stood by Tallon.
David knew Chris would be recalling once again that action of a year ago and the murderous cross-fire. Suzanne claimed there were no guns sited on this section of the coast, but it would not take long to manoeuvre two or three mobile 40mm. guns into position. If the S.S. had set a trap —
“There it is!” Crozier said it, along with a dozen others.
This time the beam held for a long second, blinked out, then winked again, shortly. Suzanne said, “Albert!” It came as a gasp of relief.
Brent used his torch to send an answer, a winking, orange glow. Then he crouched inside the shelter of the bridge-screen, pulled the girl down beside him and shone the shaded beam of the torch on the face of his watch: “I make it we have just two hours and ten minutes.”
Suzanne had also sloughed off the oilskins and the sleeve of her trenchcoat was damp under his hand. She extended her arm so her own watch was lit by the torch. Her wrist wavered as the boat rocked and David Brent gripped her hand, steadied it under the light. She agreed, “The train is due then.”
David held her a moment longer then released her, straightened and called softly, “Boats over t
he side!” Their crews waited, ready, by the three dinghies and the pulling-boat carried by the drifter. Besides Brent’s own party there were thirty-two commandos, with Tallon, to be put ashore.
Brent was going ashore because he was the senior officer. He knew the country; it was his plan and his responsibility. He turned to Jimmy Nash where he stood on the deck of the drifter only feet away. “I’m taking Grundy, an engineer, a stoker and two seamen.” He saw their heads turning.
Grundy said under his breath, “I might ha’ known! Here we go!”
Brent went on, “The rest of my crew, Tommy and all of his, will go with you. Take all the spare arms.” That was a miscellany of light machine-guns, carbines and pistols, salvaged from Brent’s boat or gleaned from the other two. He looked from Nash to Tommy Vance. “You know what you have to do. Jimmy will command in and from the drifter.”
Jimmy objected, “I’d have more mobility in one of the M.T.B.s. Tommy could —”
Brent cut him off: “The boats will stay out but the drifter has to go in. That’s where you’re needed: I need you.”
Jimmy thought that this was not a man afraid. Whatever he had seen on Brent’s face when they had been forced to abandon the original plan, it had not been fear. Recent actions had proved that. And now — Jimmy nodded acceptance of this frightening responsibility.
Brent said dryly, “You might have to use a bit of initiative.”
Jimmy tried to copy him: “I’d thought there might be that possibility.”
David grinned at that, then told him crisply, “Get away as soon as you’ve recovered the boats.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Jimmy Nash did not like lying this close to an enemy shore. He would be off as soon as he could.
The boats were ready. David went down into the dinghy that held his party and took the tiller. Grundy crouched in the bow with the engineer, the stoker and a seaman who would bring back the boat — if all went well. They all carried carbines. Cullen and another seaman pulled at the oars and Suzanne sat by Brent in the sternsheets.
